Depends how you define "meritocracy," the closest system is actually Australia which is highly dependent on commissions formed from industry professionals and actual experts in the field they're legislating. That being said, the people these commissions present to are still elected and still have the option to ignore everything they say.

A better system would be to give commissions more power or influence over parliament, open up the decision making to a wider community of experts (who may be polled, but not present evidence, for simplicity) and perhaps include digital technologies into the decision making, like internet forums.

>Now my questions:
>>Is this viable?
Australia is actually a fantastic democracy that should be studied and perhaps used as a framework for newer democracies or simply nations that wish to be more democratic.

Before you think I'm an Australian shill, Australia is benefiting from being a relatively young country itself. It's benefiting from hindsight and using America, Britain, Germany and France as guinea pigs.

>>How exactly does Meritocracy works? Who chooses who deserves power and based on what?
That's the issue and that's where corruption of meritocracy usually creeps in, especially when there's assumed biases (which may or may not exist) or when completely subjective factors, like social skills, are considered.

This is more difficult in the commission style of meritocracy since they can literally be semi-famous industry experts, but it's almost expected if usually democratically appointed positions are chosen "meritocratically."

>>What do you think about it?
Well.. aforementioned.

How is meritocracy defined? That's the biggest question.

>>1297446
What's in it for these senators? I've always thought plato's idea fora city seems good and this isn't too different. The problem is that if there's nothing in it for the participants, no one would waste their time with it. Anyone smart enough to score a position in a meritocracy could see the fact that their their own citizens slave. Without the availability of corruption and big money kickbacks, government positions are silly. Your problem isn't democracy, it's capitalism that holds us back.

>>1297548
Please dont even mention any kind of communism/socialism.. It's objectively retarded.

>>1297573
Everyone's wrong about economics. I'm just waiting for something new to pop up.

>>1297548
Generally benevolence and a will to serve the public.

>capitalism
Redistribution, aka socialism and anything leading to communism, is by nature less meritocratic. Why work hard when the state will enact efforts to make you more equal anyway? Without gun pointing authoritarianism, or Stalin's solution, there is none. How is capitalism, or rather a competition, anything less than pure meritocracy?

I'd argue, our capitalism is actually immature and awkward, but that's not the problem with capitalism rather the underlying intentions or laws surrounding capitalism. It's quite easily fixed by creating incentives for smaller businesses, cease taxation of anyone earning less than the cost of living and having the approach to taxation as incrementing levels of difficultly in this "game."

I'm quite glad /his/ understands the importance of social Darwinism.

>>1297596
Have you studied libertarianism or neoliberalism?

>>1297603
What I meant to get at is that the type of competition that capitalism creates doesn't work well with the competition that capitalism creates in the op. What's the point of capitalistic competition in a society that doesn't reward you with capital for being better than everyone else at something? Seems backwards. People are too self concerned to ever spend their lives for a cause that doesn't go anywhere. Meritocracy wouldn't work on a globalized scale. Only within an educational system focused on scientific process would something like that work. And the closest example to that that we have as a model is a hospital. But typically in a hospital neurosurgeons are payed better than research nurses.

>The senators are elected by meritocracy, not anything else.

And these votes are cast by their local constituents? This is the system many republics already have in place. It doesn't stop idiots, blowhards, moral degenerates, and the terminally rich from filling senate seats.

Moreover, the general preference for "the merited" to strive for these senate positions ignores the fact that "the merited" can probably make 50x a senate salary as a corporate CEO. Plus they'd have to give up all sorts of rights like free association and speech to prevent any corrupting interactions between themselves and businesses lobbying for influence.

>>1297603
I took some entry level polsci courses last semester and I think liberal politics are pretty stupid. Don't know much about libertarianism but I know that neoliberal economics is just futile. We can never have true free trade in our international system so why even try to make it close. Just creates disadvantages for the more liberal countries

>>1297603
Neoliberalism is not the evil conspiracy people think it is.
Take classical liberalism throw in the criticisms of it by progressives and voilà you have neoliberalism.
Free markets + Social Insurance = Neoliberalism

>The neoliberal revolution combines the free markets of classical liberalism with the income transfers of modern liberalism. Although this somewhat oversimplifies a complex reality, it broadly describes the policy changes that have transformed the world economy since 1975.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2010/Sumnerneoliberalism.html

Neoliberalism pretty much equates to economic orthodoxy. It's not markets always work best, it's markets tend to work well but when they don't let's have the government step in to provide services or correct market failures.

>>1298044
Social insurance is a bit iffy, especially when governments try to place as many hurdles as possible to ensure as few people collect as possible... Which are then all knocked down if someone is a UN refugee.

I'm Australian and it's wrong to think Australia is a welfare state. Apply for too many jobs and you'll get a bad name in the recruitment community especially with those IT agencies who post fake ads, apply for the wrong jobs and you're wasting people's time, getting rejected because it's either clearly not your expertise or you're clearly over qualified.

This is why new start (essentially the government scheme to pay people to apply for jobs) just doesn't help the recent graduates who are struggling to get a job, but it's great for new arrivals and unqualified people who can safely apply for everything. New start fails the massive youth unemployed, it fails to rectify the most significant economic statistic of our time.

Besides new start, there's little else someone means tested too high can apply for. Means testing is essentially how adult children of upper/middle class families who deliberately don't spoil their children get fucked over, because unless I argue hard (usually for medical reasons or getting a job reasons) my parents refuse to give me a cent.

I have a better option to help the poor, stop taxing anyone earning less than the living wage, stop taxing businesses under 5 years old altogether and implement massive fines for diversity hiring, which just fucks white male STEM graduates hard and makes them near unemployable. With enough incentives for small businesses, who by and large provide much more jobs than if 3 or 4 companies dominate, we would have job vacancies rather than unemployment. This is good. This advantages employees over employers. It promotes equality more than anything Marxist.

/rant

I get set off by redistributive ideas. Stop throwing money at problems.

>>1298058
I always had in mind tax credits for the working poor ( which is pretty much the same as a tax rebate ), loans for education/expenses while training and not much else aside from some job seekers allowance as there will always be some unemployment. It doesn't have to be pre-1990's Sweden tier ( although they significantly reformed their welfare state in the 90's ). I have heard that Australia is a bit of a small government/medium government success is this true?

>>1298162
Australia wishes it were a small government libertopia, but in fact you pay more tax in Australia than in most developed European nations (except France) and all northern American nations. Coupled with lots of spending cuts and a relatively low debt to GDP (hovering around 30% against the around 80% for the USA) the big question is where the fuck is this money going?

No Australia as a libertarian paradise is a common delusion most politicians here have, for Labor (our left wing) it's used to justify more spending and for Liberal it's used to justify staying true to that false ideal.

Relevant, I just saw on the news a program to create internships in Australia. I still need to research them, but if they're anything like the internships engineering Australia promoted, you'll have to have brown skin or a vagina to be accepted for any of them.